Social cohesion among rural women in Nigeria and resistance to gender-based traditional practices : implication to womanism in Africa, social justice and sustainable development

Gender-based cultural practices against women are some of the enduring challenges with gender inequality and social justice implications in sub-Saharan Africa. Although womanism and feminism have penetrated sub-Saharan Africa, the polarisation between, and within the frameworks of womanism and feminism have prevailed against significant progress in women liberation in the region. This polarisation demonstrates the unseen disintegration within the women ranks mak-ing them vulnerable to cultural practices against women. As such, the present study examined the interaction between social cohesion and gender-based cultural practices against women in remote rural communities in southeast Nigeria. Sur-vey design was applied in the study, while questionnaire instrument (social cohe-sion scale) was used in collecting data from the respondents. The collected data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. According to the findings from the study, there is a negative correlation between connection with

social cohesion and vulnerability to Harmful traditional cultural practices (R -.680, P < .01), vulnerability to Harmful traditional cultural practices is predicted by socio-economic variables (R = 0.922, P < .05), while identification with social cohesion is predicted by socioeconomic variables (R = 0.965, P < .05). [Publisher's Text]